Sport: The Free Riders

The scandals dredged up in the college basketball fix investigation
(TIME, Feb. 26 et seq.) prompted the New York Times to take a long (20
columns) look at "the impact of athletics on education." Times Reporter
Charles Grutzner, working with twelve bird-dogging assistants, spent 3½
weeks covering 40 college campuses. By last week he had flushed a covey
of shockers.

Wherever the newsmen went, they found a depressingly recurrent pattern
of "free rides" for good basketball and football players who were
given "large cash payments, clothing and automobiles as inducements to
enroll." The colleges, Grutzner found, do not wait around for...